Jewish Peace News (JPN) is an information service that circulates news clippings, analyses, editorial commentary, and action alerts concerning the Israel / Palestine conflict. We work to promote a just resolution to the conflict; we believe that the cause of both peace and justice will be served when Israel ends the occupation, withdrawing completely from the Palestinian territories and finding a solution to the Palestinian refugee crisis within the framework of international law.

The 2010 U.S. Assembly of Jews, a national conference held in Detroit in late June, began at an unusual hour for a Jewish conclave: late on a Saturday afternoon. It wasn't the most accommodating move for participants who observe the Sabbath, but then, the conference's organizers may not have expected any: This was the first major gathering of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network. Given that the term "anti-Zionist" is an epithet to many in the organized American Jewish community, one might assume that any American Jew who'd schlep to Michigan to discuss strategies for "decolonizing Palestine" would fall outside that community's religious and cultural margins as well.

So, it came as a surprise when, at 11:30 on that first Saturday night, after an exhausting opening session, about a quarter of the 200 conference-goers, overwhelmingly under 30, gathered to celebrate havdalah, the ceremony that ushers out the Sabbath. As they swayed in a circle singing "Lo Yisa Goy," a Hebrew folksong—"and into plowshares beat their swords, nations shall learn war no more"—the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network felt for a moment like Jewish summer camp. Many Jewish community leaders would not have been enthusiastic about the scene. And, in echoes that reverberated throughout the conference, neither were some leaders of the Jewish Anti-Zionist Network.

A growing cohort of young Jews actively involved in Jewish life—often in alternative realms like independent minyans, the Yiddish-revival movement, and social-justice organizations—are taking left-wing positions on Israel that leave them feeling marginalized even in the Jewish communities they call home. Ideologically, they range from those who couch their politics in the language of international law and ultimately favor a two-state solution to those who use the more radical language of anti-imperialism and insist that true democracy can never happen within a Jewish state—with countless shades in between. By flirting with the labels "non-Zionist" and "anti-Zionist" without abandoning other traditional affiliations, they have crossed a line into territory where there exists no well-marked space on the American Jewish ideological map.

Into this vacuum came the first conference of the two-year-old International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, a still-obscure organization (though one now on the watch list of some mainstream Jewish organizations) with a moniker echoing those of long-defunct groups, like the Jewish Communist Labor Bund, that tethered Jewish specificity to the international left. For many of the young Jews who turned out in Detroit—most en route to the U.S. Social Forum, a major activist expo that was held in the city later that week—the Assembly seemed to promise a distinctly Jewish space in which to engage in or try on the ideas that Zionism does in fact equal racism and that only a one-state solution can mean justice for Palestinians—regardless of whether they take such a hard line in their day-to-day lives.

But then they encountered a new problem: Their elders on the radical left didn't know what to do with them either. They were too Jewish.

"Folks like us get it from both sides," said a 27-year-old Jewish religious professional at the conference who requested anonymity because, she said, she feared repercussions if her views became known. "We're not loyal enough to the Jews and we're not pure enough for the anti-Zionists."

The existence of non- and anti-Zionist Jews is in itself nothing novel; from socialist Jewish movements in prewar Eastern Europe to the ultra-Orthodox sect Neturei Karta, they have been around as long as Zionism itself. What may be new is the emergence of a group of Jews whose leftism does not automatically equal secularism, as it did for generations of Marxists, and who, at the same time, grew up in or were welcomed into a liberal sector of the religious landscape that has grown exponentially over the past few decades. It's not hard these days, at least in most American cities with large Jewish communities, to find synagogues or minyans that explicitly welcome feminists, gay Jews, and those suspicious of religious hierarchies—as well as spaces next door for those more interested in Yiddish culture or social action.

"For the past 10 years, and particularly from the Second Lebanon War up to the present, there's been a resurgence of Jewish anti-Zionism where Zionism had once been strongest: among secular liberal Jews," said Sam Freedman, a Columbia University journalism professor who has covered the American Jewish community for decades. In a recent New York Times column, he discussed the revival of the American Council for Judaism, a non-Zionist spinoff of the Reform movement. "It's gone from being a totally peripheral part of the Jewish scene to some growing minority of the Jewish scene." (According to Hebrew Union College sociologist Steven M. Cohen, no numbers yet exist on the size of the trend.)

The members of this demographic who turned up at the Assembly of Jews voiced a range of complaints about the Jewish institutions in their lives. A 25-year-old environmental activist named Hillary Lehr from Oakland, California, said she no longer wanted to visit the Reform synagogue she'd attended as a child because its pro-Israel stance was casually embedded into ritual life, from prayers for the Jewish state to tzedakah boxes for the Jewish National Fund. "I want to de-Zionize my synagogue because it's not about being a Zionist, it's about Judaism," Lehr said. "There's a generation that's ready to go back to those religious and spiritual spaces. I want to say to my rabbi, 'I want to come back to my spirituality and I want there to be space for all of us because we're all Jews.' "

Avi Grenadier, 27, who runs a progressive Jewish radio show called Radio613 in Kingston, Ontario, voiced similar objections about his religious education at a Conservative synagogue in a small Ontario town: Israel, he said, had taken the place of religious content—which meant that when he became disillusioned with the Jewish state, there was no other iteration of Judaism to fall back on. "I knew more about Mossad agents' biographies than about the Nevi'im," said Grenadier, who said he studied Jewish texts for the first time last year at Yeshivat Hadar, an egalitarian yeshiva in Manhattan. He now wears a yarmulke and observes the Sabbath.

Others voiced a complaint specific to institutions at the left-most edge of the mainstream Jewish world: Because opinion on Israel can be expected to vary widely—and explosively—in such congregations and organizations, some, by dictate or custom, have simply made discussion of Israel taboo.

Some non-Zionist Jews say they want what more pro-Israel factions of the community have: spaces where the Jewish state can be freely discussed and, indeed, turned into a political cause. But others questioned whether creating congregations that organize around the Palestinian cause would simply replicate the inextricability of Judaism and Zionism at more traditional places of worship.

"It's not like I'm trapped in this synagogue where there's all these Zionist politics on Shabbat and I want to create a Shabbat where there's all these anti-Zionist politics," said Aaron Levitt, 40, a former board member at West End Synagogue, a Reconstructionst congregation in Manhattan, who left the shul after several years of trying to unmoor it from allegiance to Israel (and who was not at the conference). "It would be just as bad; it might even be worse."

Levitt helped start a non-Zionist minyan this year called Page 36 with fellow Jewish pro-Palestinian activists including a young Reconstructionist rabbi, Alissa Wise—not, he said, because he ultimately wants to pray only with political comrades, but as a kind of stopgap measure while truly "Zionist-neutral" congregations remain few and far between. At the same time, he added, the minyan was inspired by frustration with what he sees as a lack of interest among many of his coreligionist political comrades in aspects of spirituality and peoplehood that go beyond Jewish-flavored universalist politics.

"I care about Palestinians as much as anyone else," said Levitt, "but I'm engaged in all this stuff because I care about Jews and Judaism."

****It was around precisely these questions of priorities—whether anti-Zionist Jewish movements should be motivated at their deepest level by concern about Jews, or about Palestinians—that the Assembly of Jews became to some extent factionalized. At one end of the spectrum were Jewish Anti-Zionist Network leaders who argued that Jewishness was relevant to the group's mission primarily to the extent to which it could be used strategically in the public-relations battle over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—and that to center their own identities much beyond that would, ironically, become another vehicle for Jewish self-obsession.

"Lots of successful movements have found resources and inspiration in spiritual and cultural work, and none of them have mistaken spiritual and cultural work for the movement itself," said Sarah Kershnar, one of the Jewish Anti-Zionist Network's founders. "The reason we pushed back on identity being the central place to act from is it sometimes lacks that connection with what's really happening in the world."

That reasoning went down well with some participants, particularly older ones who, in many cases, described themselves as red-diaper babies or as having been alienated from an older and more conservative iteration of the Jewish world for decades over anything from politics to sexuality.

At the other end of the spectrum were those who hewed more closely to Levitt's view. They got their havdalah service on the Assembly's program (though everyone else left the conference center before it began) and led workshops on "Jewish Anti-Zionist Spiritual Reclamation" and "Reclaiming Ashkenazi Cultural Spaces From a Zionist Agenda." But tensions repeatedly surfaced, at public discussions and behind the scenes.

"It's startling how much easier it is to bring my politics to Jewish spaces than to bring my Jewishness here," said a participant active in the Boston minyan scene who wanted to remain anonymous because she hopes to apply for Hebrew school teaching jobs. "The organizers kept asking, 'What is the material benefit this will have? How is this going to end Zionism?' And it was like, we don't want to justify why we pray."

For those who left the Assembly of Jews with mixed feelings, the conference may ultimately have connected them less to the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network than to a nascent, nameless network of similarly minded young people. Interested parties passed around sign-up sheets for non-Zionist Yom Kippur retreats and hatched an idea to participate in the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement to isolate Israel by selling their own, emphatically Diaspora-made, Jewish ritual objects.

A few days after the Assembly ended, some participants who had stayed in town for the Social Forum held a non-Zionist Shabbat dinner along Detroit's waterfront. And almost immediately, they encountered a challenge: One of the few other Jewish contingents at the Social Forum had come from Hashomer Hatzair, a socialist Zionist youth movement. How to integrate the two groups while giving the anti-Zionists the Shabbat they had been promised? The event's coordinator crafted a text message that she hoped would address the concerns of Assembly folk while also engaging with their Zionist colleagues.

"As most Jewish spaces marginalize the voices of non- and anti-Zionist Jews, this space will privilege the voices of those Jews," she wrote. But, she added: "All are welcome."

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Boaz Okon, former Israeli judge and current legal affairs editor for the right-leaning and largest Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Aharonoth, has called a spade a spade using both the forbidden words; apartheid and fascism. In his article, "Draw Me a Monster," translated into English by the Coteret website, he described a long and still-growing list of recent moves by Israel's authorities. "These dots," he wrote, "are growing evidence of the lack of the spirit of freedom and the emergence of apartheid and fascism. If you look at each dot separately you might miss the bigger picture. Like a child watching a military brigade march, and after seeing the battalions, the batteries and the companies, asking: "And when is the brigade finally coming?" the answer is that while he watched the marching of the battalions, batteries and companies, he was actually watching the brigade. So is the situation in Israel. You do not have to ask where the apartheid is. These events, which are accepted withsilence and indifference, together create a picture of a terrible reality." (See: http://coteret.com/2010/06/23/yediots-legal-affairs-editor-on-the-emergence-of-apartheid-and-fascism-in-israel/.)

A major channel of civil resistance to these developments, the Palestinian-led worldwide movement to face Israel with Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), is gaining ground and drawing the worried attention of government and media in Israel (http://www.boycottisrael.info/content/israel-must-change-or-collapse-impact-bds). The Israeli part of this is now becoming a target for new repressive moves on the part of the legislature (that has just passed a preliminary bill that would criminalize support for BDS), the government and the security services (that have recently called in at least one BDS activist for questioning - see http://www.promisedlandblog.com/?p=3178).

The item below is an analysis of a current right-wing campaign to suppress and dismantle another substantial, resilient and longtime channel of resistance to Israel's open adoption of full-fledged fascism. This is a campaign targeting human rights organizations working to demand the accountability of Israel's officials and official organs, to document its systemic human rights violations and, to some extent, to redress the survivors and victims of these violations. What seems to be a comfortable front of far-right "non-governmental organizations" is doing, or at least leading, the government's dirty work on these campaigns, conveniently retaining a governmental façade of democracy. Ishai Menuhin, of the Public Committee Against Torture, describes this campaign, its mechanics and its very serious significance.

By Ishai Menuchin Democracy is far more than majority rule. For a society to be truly democratic, it must allow for freedom of expression and open deliberation of issues, as well as the liberty to organize - politically and in other areas of life. Civil-society organizations, for example, are essential tools for challenging the government and legislature in the media, courts and via public protest. Such checks and balances maintain the openness of a society and keep it democratic in spirit, not just on paper.

The shift characterized by last year's election, which resulted in a far-right government, means that the Knesset now has a disturbingly small minority of representatives (about 10 percent ) commonly identified with human rights and social justice. Such a minority will be hard-pressed to mount opposition to the country's growing right-wing trends and policies.

As the political left has shrunk in size and influence, the organizations that promote universal values have become the only clear and systematic opposition to official human rights abuses, whether within Israel proper or in the occupied territories. Thus, HROs have become the new enemies of the Israeli far right. For it, the human-rights agenda is unacceptable and inherently "anti-Israeli," and thus it has a duty to stop it.

The recent attacks are spearheaded by such organizations as NGO Monitor, Israel Academia Monitor and Im Tirtzu, but they apparently enjoy the backing of the government and of many right-wing Knesset members. They constitute a new phenomenon in Israel - civil-society organizations whose main activity is to attack other organizations. Their efforts go beyond the normal give-and-take of democratic discourse, and seems to be directed at halting human-rights advocacy and having the HROs legislated out of existence.

For example, in December 2009, NGO Monitor, together with the Institute for Zionist Strategies, sponsored a conference at the Knesset, ostensibly on the subject of the funding of Israeli NGOs by foreign governments. In reality, it was a platform to launch a general assault on the human rights community. A short time later, seven MKs introduced a bill concerning disclosure requirements for groups receiving support from "a foreign political entity" - a measure that, if passed in its original version, would affect our position as civil-society organizations and ultimately tax our donations. The government has voted to support the bill, which is now under discussion in a ministerial committee.

Effectively, under the guise of transparency, the bill would legislate most of HR advocacy out of existence by negating HROs' status as independent associations, forcing them to present themselves in the public sphere as the recipients of funding from foreign governments.

Of course, there is no such "transparency" initiative being directed at the countless number of right-wing organizations and settler associations that have, over the decades, spent vast amounts of public funds trampling the rights of Palestinians, thwarted peace and scuttled democracy. Although most of these organizations are not funded by foreign governments, a general policy of transparency would require that their use of funding from foreign evangelical groups or the illegal use of funds collected on a tax-deductible basis in the U.S. for the support of settlements in occupied territory also be reported. It is clear that the motivation behind the restrictions on human rights NGOs is to suppress dissent while allowing the settlement enterprise to continue unhindered.

To be clear: The transparency argument is a cover. The HR community cannot be more transparent than it already is. Our agendas, financial records and donor lists are open to all. We annually report this information, including details about funds received from foreign states, to the Amutot (non-profit associations ) Registrar and the tax authorities, and it is freely available on our websites and in our reports. The proposed law answers no pressing policy need and would only change the status of the NGOs in question to their detriment. It seems that organizations such as Im Tirtzu and NGO Monitor are most disturbed by the audacity of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (and other NGOs ) in demanding investigations, prosecution and trials of suspected violations of human rights and humanitarian law, and their call for appropriate international action if those suspected of war crimes are not brought to justice in Israel.

Every supporter of human rights, every believer in democratic values and anyone whose beliefs are rooted in the centrality of the rule of law should demand the same. It is right and just that those to whom Israeli democracy is dear will act to protect victims of human rights violations even - and, indeed, perhaps more vigilantly - when the violations are carried out by their own society.

Last month, 25 MKs proposed legislation aimed at outlawing any Israeli organization that is involved in universal jurisdiction activity. The proposed law aims to prohibit the registration of new NGOs, or to close down existing ones, if "there are reasonable grounds for concluding that the association is providing information to foreign entities or is involved in legal proceedings abroad against senior Israeli government officials or Israel Defense Forces officers, for war crimes."

If adopted, the bill would legitimize the suppression of information regarding the commission of such crimes. As such, this legislation has serious implications with respect to international law, the rule of law and Israel's accountability for international crimes. The proposal also conflicts with numerous principles of international law to which Israel is obligated, and totally unwarranted restrictions on the freedom of association and expression, and would deny victims their fundamental right to an effective legal remedy.

Last week, 25 MKs proposed yet another bill, intended to fine any citizen, person or foreign entity that encourages a boycott or a specific sanction against the State of Israel or any individual because of his affiliation with the state or with regions, such as the territories, under Israel's control. For example, it would be illegal to promote a boycott on products from the settlements.

The real danger comes from the collaboration between organizations, politicians and government officials who share the notion that universal values, especially those relating to human rights, are left-wing - and, therefore, anti-Israel. What has emerged out of this collusion is a situation in which these organizations level charges against human rights defenders and the state files the indictment and prosecutes us. These efforts pose a serious and immediate threat to the goal of a lasting and sustainable HR agenda in Israel.

Dr. Ishai Menuchin is executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel. This piece is based on an address he gave in June before the European Parliament's Subcommittee on Human Rights.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

In this blog post to the highly informative Palestine Note website (http://palestinenote.com/) Merav Amir and Dalit Baum, both members of the Coalition of Women for Peace (http://coalitionofwomen.org/home/english), describe their project 'Who Profits from the Occupation?' (http://www.whoprofits.org/). The project collects specific information about the full range of economic involvement in the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Many people already engage in 'ethical shopping' practices by refusing to buy products made by settlers in the occupied territories. But Amir and Baum show that the economic penetration of the occupation goes much further than this relatively modest consumer market, including banks (like Dexia) that provide loans to local settlement governments, those involved in the security/repression industrial complex (constructing and maintaining the wall, checkpoints, providing surveillance equipment, fencing for Israeli-only roads etc.) and also Israeliproducers that benefit from the violent elimination of Palestinian economic activity either through the removal of potential competitors or through the exploitation of the Palestinian consumer market as a dumping ground for low grade produce. 'Who Profits?' is already making waves in Israel itself, landing an uncritical review with the new Israel business paper Calcalist (according to the British Observer newspaper http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/11/israel-academics-bds-boycott). The project shows how the privatization of government services (including government repression) that has been so characteristic of the neoliberal era in Israel as elsewhere can, with a good information source like 'Who Profits?' open up new avenues for activist engagement. The sheer scale of the commercial sector's investment in the occupation of Palestine provides another argument in favor of selective divestment as an activist tool to end the occupation. Alistair Welchman

Merav Amir is a scholar and activist. She is a PhD candidate at the Tel Aviv University and the research coordinator of Who Profits from the Occupation in the Coalition of Women for Peace.

Dalit Baum. PhD, is a feminist activist and scholar. She teaches classes in gender studies, the global economy and activism in Beit Berl College and in the Haifa University. She is the project coordinator of Who Profits from the Occupation in the Coalition of Women for Peace.

Ever since the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa intifada, the Israeli anti-occupation movement has been reinventing itself in new forms of action and solidarity work. Facing hostile denial from Israeli public opinion, large protests have first been met by a complete lack of media attention, and then by a wave of public sympathy for police and army violence towards protestors. The movement, further marginalized and radicalized, has found itself reorganizing as a network of small groups, each specializing in a different form of direct action, public education or resistance work. In this network, the feminist anti-occupation movement has found a central and leading role, both in keeping visible opposition in the Israeli street, and in creating ad-hoc as well as long term coalitions for broader efforts.

Who Profits from the Occupation is one such specialized project of the Coalition of Women for Peace (CWP). It came into being in 2006 as a political compromise in a deep on-going discussion inside the organization concerning our response to the July 2005 Palestinian call for Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS), a call also specifically directed toward Israeli activists. CWP is an organization comprised of Jewish and Palestinian women activists from within 1948 Israel, and affiliated left-feminist groups such as Women in Black, New Profile, Bat Shalom, Machsom (Checkpoint) Watch and Tandi. As a radical feminist organization, CWP has been haunted from its inception by dilemmas of economic justice with respect to the occupation, and by the challenges of solidarity and respective privilege in the joint movement, all of which led to the BDS discussion.

What is the role of Israelis in a movement that calls for international pressure? How can an Israeli organization continue to try to communicate and change Israeli public opinion in such a setting? What is the responsibility of Israeli Ashkenazi middle class women who advocate economic measures that might further impoverish the poor, Mizrahi Jews or Palestinians living in Israel? The discussion raised valid and important questions, and in the tradition of consensus decision-making, it focused on existing agreements: to promote economic activism in all forms against the 1967 occupation both in Palestine/Israel and internationally. The decision included a plan for action – the initiation of a grassroots research effort, both to educate ourselves about the economy of the occupation and to serve the broader movement, using our access to this information.

Three years later, in November 2009, the general body of CWP reconvened to review the BDS discussion. Strikingly, this time support for the general call for BDS was unanimous. Throughout those three years we witnessed the attacks and the siege on Gaza; the occupation in the West Bank has further entrenched itself as a form of apartheid regime; this was all done with the support of Israeli public opinion. At the same time, the BDS movement has grown globally, and CWP has played an important part in it through its three-year research project entitled Who Profits from the Occupation. Through the project we have studied new facets of the economy of the occupation, and the results of our three year study have played an important part in showing how the use of boycott, divestment and sanctions is justified, necessary, and potentially very effective in our work for a just peace in Israel/Palestine.

From Cost to Profit

This is not the first time that the Israeli anti-occupation movement has tried to engage with the economic aspects of the occupation. The well-worn Peace Now slogan "Money to the [inner-city] neighborhoods and not to the settlements" was coined about thirty years ago. It has been criticized since for its simplistic formation and presented as proof of this movement's disregard for "real" class and poverty issues. This slogan was developed into a solid argument by researchers such as Shlomo Swirski of the Adva Center, who conduct periodic studies estimating the cost of the occupation to the Israeli economy and society. Arguing that the occupation is very costly aims to undermine the Israeli-Jewish support for the settlements and for the ongoing occupation, but a closer look at the same figures shows that much of the same economic cost (to the Israeli public) can also be viewed as income (to certain parties). This new perspective also calls for another line of political intervention:it is not enough to rhetorically inform the Israeli public about the costs of the occupation, it is also necessary to directly influence their economic interests by applying pressure to raise the price of the occupation.

Israeli control of the West Bank and Gaza has changed over the years, but from the start and throughout it has remained a system of economic-military control. Economic exploitation and repression have been used as tools to control the Palestinian population, and the terms of this control have been dictated by the interests of the Israeli economic elite. A potentially competitive Palestinian economy was actively de-developed, the movement of Palestinian workers and goods was regulated to the benefit of the Israeli market, and the Palestinian consumer market has become a captive market for Israeli goods. Israeli manufacturers, employers and merchants have used this economic-military control to secure profits.

During the 1990's the Israeli economy underwent very rapid neoliberal reforms, which included cuts in social services and support; increased exposure to global investors, markets and corporations; and the privatization of public services, national projects and governmental assets and companies. These dramatic changes in the Israeli economy have significantly increased the economic activity of private companies in the occupied territory, in the settlements, at the checkpoints, providing security services, technologies and weapons. As is the case in similar global settings, such as the American military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, with the rise of the occupation business, the corporate sector has a higher stake in maintaining the occupation.

As grassroots activists, we tackle political arguments and religious/nationalistic beliefs in the Israeli public arena, but economic interests are often more hidden and intricate, and Who Profits was set up as an effort to expose and study these interests, in order to influence them. Corporate complicity with the occupation is a dangerous influential force that can stifle peace initiatives or set them back. On the other hand, corporations are profit-oriented, and their involvement in these controversial endeavors can become costly for them: public campaigns could tarnish their public image, important clients or investors could choose to leave them due to ethical concerns, and complicity with human rights violations could even have legal repercussions in some countries. In a way, this increased corporate involvement can be used to enhance civil society's reach and influence, if we can effectively demand corporate accountability.

Who Profits from the Occupation focuses on exposing these corporate interests, in order to provide accurate, reliable and well-documented information for such corporate accountability campaigns. As Israeli activists, living inside 1948 Israel, who speak Hebrew, have freedom of movement in the occupied territory and are well acquainted with the Israeli economy and the occupation, we are at a useful vantage point for such research. Almost all of our information comes from the companies' own publications or from regular visits to sites in the occupied West Bank and Golan Heights. We have set up a database listing specific corporations, launched a website, www.whoprofits.org, and have become an information center, aiding dozens of initiatives and providing on-going support by checking information for campaigns, both internationally and locally.

Beyond the boycott of settlement products

When we started our mapping of the occupation industry, the main focus of economic activism against the occupation was on settlement production. Long lists of settlement companies and products were distributed by Gush Shalom, Bat Shalom and some student organizations, as tools for consumer boycotts. The lists themselves were mostly based on the companies' main address, leaving out most of the distributors of agricultural goods, products partially manufactured in the settlements or companies registered elsewhere. Hence, these boycotts included only a small number of well-known products; they were carried out by a small group of Israeli, mostly Jewish, activists; at best, they were implemented as individual concerns, framed within the language of ethical shopping practices.

Besides being an easy, perhaps even a much too easy route for Israelis to seemingly distance themselves from the settlements, these initiatives did not provide the tools for taking on specific companies with sustained campaigns, in order to change corporate policies. More significantly, our research shows that settlement industries are few, the revenues from them are very limited and for all but a handful of agricultural settlements, they do not contribute substantially to the settlements' economic sustainability. Consequently, we have decided to broaden the focus of our mapping, and include, under the headline "settlement industry", the entire economic sustenance of the settlements. In addition to settlements' agricultural and industrial production, we investigate real estate deals, construction of settlements and infrastructure and the provision of all vital services and utilities to the settlements. Israeli and international corporations build roads and housing units, provideservices such as public transportation, waste management, water, security and telecommunication, provide loans and market goods.

This wider settlement industry includes most large Israeli retailers and service providers. These companies claim a policy of "nondiscrimination", meaning that they provide equal services inside the official borders of Israel and in the occupied territory – to the Jewish-Israeli settlers. Their intended services map does not include the Palestinian residents of the West Bank. In other words, their policy is not only a policy of systematic discrimination; it is a facet of the ethnic segregation between Palestinians and Jews in the occupied West Bank.

Dexia Israel: from public to private and back

The increasing privatization of governmental services in Israel has not skipped over local governance and municipalities. International corporations offer local authorities anything from waste management and public transportation services to management and financial services, and many of the public tenders for these services in Israel cover services to regional councils and municipalities of settlements in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. This provides new opportunities for activist intervention, as exemplified by the quick success of the campaign against Dexia Bank.

In 2001, Israel privatized the Israeli Municipality Treasure Bank, a governmental institution providing credit and financial services to local authorities. The bank was bought by the Belgian-French financial group Dexia and renamed Dexia-Israel, while retaining most of its former functions.

In June 2007, the bank's CEO David Kapah was summoned to the Knesset Finance Committee by representatives of the settlement movement, after making allegations that Dexia-Israel refrained from providing loans to West Bank settlements. Kapah claimed that Dexia had no such "discrimination" policy, and he listed, for the record, at least seven Israeli settlements and three regional authorities of settlements that had received long term loans from his bank since 2003. Little did he know that Who Profits and the Belgian solidarity group Intal had been looking for such proof of direct involvement for many months.

The loans provided by Dexia are used for the development of infrastructure, the construction of public buildings and for municipal services. Further investigation has proven that the bank provides services to additional local authorities of settlements; it operates as a financial channel transferring government funds to settlements and it provides them with loans using future public income as collateral. Moreover, the bank regularly transfers funds from the Israeli National Lottery (Mif'al HaPa'is) to settlements, funds which are used for the construction of schools, community centers and for other projects of local development.

Intal and other Belgian groups, working with the Coalition of Women for Peace, launched a campaign called "Israel colonizes - Dexia finances", calling Dexia to break all economic ties to Israeli settlement activity. This demand gained much public credence after September 2008, when Dexia bank was bailed out by the governments of Belgium, France and Luxembourg, governments that officially oppose construction of Israeli settlements and view them as illegal. Thus, privatization of financial services has come almost full circle: from the Israeli government-assured support for its own controversial colonization projects, to a seemingly indifferent international publicly-traded corporation, and back to substantial national ownership, this time on the part of a European public very much opposed to the same projects.

In June 2009, the management of the Dexia Group stated that financing Israeli settlements was contrary to the bank's code of ethics, and that it would stop providing new loans to West Bank settlements; furthermore, the bank announced that it had not given any new loans to settlements since June 2008. However, our research exposed records that show that the bank had continued to provide new loans to local authorities of settlements during 2009. The campaign continues, demanding from the bank both accountability for its actions and the complete divestment from all settlement-related activities.

The business of repression

The settlement industry does not exhaust the different ways in which corporations benefit from the 1967 occupation; our mapping adds two more categories of corporate involvement. The second category studies corporations involved in Israeli control over the Palestinian population in the occupied territory. This includes the construction and operation of the Wall and the checkpoints and, in general, the supply and operation of means for surveillance and control of Palestinian movement inside the occupied territory and between the occupied territory and the State of Israel. Aware of our own limited capacities, we decided not to directly investigate the military industrial complex and the weapons industry, but they would fit nicely into this category as well. Since 9/11 and the terror attacks in Europe, the growing market of the homeland security industry has contributed significantly to the growth of the Israeli high-tech market. Often, the Israeli-controlled area is perceived as atesting ground or a laboratory for new innovations to be "tested on Palestinians". We have seen this used by sales representatives of Israeli homeland security products as a blunt marketing strategy.

One example of a seemingly benign company deeply involved in the restriction and control of Palestinian movement in the occupied territory is the South African steel and wire producer, Cape Gate, whose Israeli affiliate Yehuda Welded Mesh has supplied security fencing for separation barriers in the "seam line" zone, around settlements and Israeli-only roads and railroads, settlement industrial zones and the besieged Gaza Strip. It is perhaps ironic that the late founder and owner of this company, Mendel Kaplan, former President of the World Zionist Congress, wrote extensively about his opposition to Apartheid in his own country and called upon all Jews in South Africa to "give leadership in the movement to abolish all discriminatory practices" as a lesson from Jewish history.

Last but not least: exploitation

The third category of involvement points to corporations that directly benefit from systemic advantages stemming from the Israeli control of Palestinian land, people and market. This category includes the companies that plunder natural resources in the occupied area, use it as a dumping ground for waste, profit from the exploitation of Palestinian labor and benefit from access to the captive Palestinian consumer market.

For example, many Israeli food manufacturers and distributors benefit from selling low-grade products in the West Bank, while Palestinian competitors are denied free movement through Israeli military checkpoints. Similarly, telecommunication service providers exploit Israeli control of land and airwaves in the occupied area to illegally penetrate the Palestinian market.

Perhaps it is appropriate to give one example of a company involved in all three categories. The giant transnational corporation Cemex is one of the largest suppliers of building materials globally and is controlled by the Mexican tycoon Lorenzo Zambrano. Through its Israeli subsidiary, Readymix Industries, the company has several plants in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, in which it uses Palestinian labor. It is a partner in an aggregates quarry in the West Bank, exploiting Palestinian non-renewable natural resources for the needs of the Israeli construction industry. Furthermore, the company has provided 'concrete elements' for the construction of security walls and military checkpoints in the West Bank.

Who Profits has prepared the corporate research for a Supreme Court petition submitted by Yesh Din in March 2009, demanding a halt to all Israeli mining activity in West Bank quarries, including the Yatir quarry, co-owned by Cemex. Israeli quarries operating in the occupied territory transfer most of their output back into Israel. As stated in the petition, this type of activity violates the laws of occupation and in some cases it may be considered pillage. In May 2010, the government of Israel informed the court that it would stop all new land allocation for Israeli quarrying purposes in the West Bank and would cease to approve any expansion of existing quarries there as well. As of June 2010, the petition is still pending before the court.

Israel and the occupation: where is the Green Line?

As we complete our mapping, one fact becomes very clear: any clear-cut distinction between the Israeli economy as a whole and the economy of the occupation can no longer be justified. The Green Line border has all but disappeared from the corporate activity map. Even if we only look at the Israeli settlements, and then again only focus on settlement construction, we will discover that the major players in the Israeli economy are deeply complicit. For instance, our findings show that all major Israeli banks have funded and supervised construction projects in the settlements.

According to Israeli regulations, every construction project has to have an "accompanier" bank, which not only provides funding and loans, but acts as an active partner and supervisor of the project on the ground. Thus, all major Israeli banks are not only aiding in the construction of settlements, but are actively involved in this activity. Moreover, all of the Israeli banks provide mortgage loans for homebuyers in settlements; provide financial services to Israeli business activities in the occupied territory and to local authorities of settlements. Most large retailers have branches in settlements, service providers provide their services, importers and exporters exploit the uneven trade agreements.

The Israeli economy is highly centralized; it is often claimed that a handful of tycoons control a third of private sector revenues, as well as most media, telecommunications, banking and infrastructure industries. Our research shows that each of these central economic players is implicated in the occupation industry in more ways than one.

Thus, we can safely say that most of the Israeli economy is involved in the economy of the occupation and, from an economic perspective; the Green Line is long gone. Choosing to call for economic activism against Israeli corporations directly complicit in the Israeli occupation, rather than calling for economic activism against all significant Israeli corporations, should be regarded as a strategic decision, since this distinction is almost only a semantic one. However, tracing the occupation involvement of corporations broadens our perspective, since, as our database shows, many of the culprit companies are international corporations.

Who Profits today

In 2010, the Who Profits database holds over 1000 companies in the three categories of involvement, with specific information about their direct complicity in at least one of the aspects of the military-economic control system. The details are crucial for the effectiveness and success of any campaign, be it legal or educational, using public advocacy or economic pressure.

The BDS movement aims to put pressure from the outside on Israel and its economy. Using corporate accountability for the occupation is a powerful tool, both legally and politically. The targets for economic activism should be chosen with care, because this budding movement needs to educate and recruit, and, most of all, because it needs to make a difference. For that purpose, we continue to investigate and document corporate involvement in the occupation.

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Many of us who work in academics, health care, or non-profit organizations have our retirement funds invested with the giant financial services company, TIAA-CREF. TIAA-CREF has investments in corporations that profit from the Israeli occupation, corporations such as Caterpillar and Motorola. A Jewish Voice for Peace is campaigning to get TIAA-CREF to divest its holdings from such corporations (see text of petition below).

TIAA-CREF has been peddling a double line for some time. On the one hand, it affirms that its responsibility is to invest in a diversity of corporations in order to earn a "competitive financial return on the retirement savings" of its investors (see its reply to the JVP petition, printed below). At the same time, its corporate slogan is "Financial Services for the Greater Good", and its Policy Statement on Corporate Governance affirms social values and a commitment to use investment as a tool to promote positive social change. (see: http://www.csrwire.com/press/press_release/19925-TIAA-CREF-Says-One-Thing-and-Does-Another-Corporate-Social-Responsibility-Leader-Falls-Short ) Moreover, intensive divestment campaigns have succeeded in getting TIAA-CREF to divest from World Bank bonds and, most recently, from "certain companies with ties to Sudan."

In view of this, it is particularly incumbent on those of us who are invested in TIAA-CREF to let them know that we do not want our rates of return maximized at the cost of human rights abuses and violations of international law. And even if TIAA-CREF is only interested in cost-benefit analyses, the persistent struggles of the Palestinian people and Israeli and international peace activists may ultimately affect the bottom line of unethical companies like Caterpillar (as was the case in South Africa). Please click on the link below to take action.

We are participants and investors in TIAA-CREF funds who are deeply concerned that TIAA-CREF invests in many companies that profit from Israel's occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Some of these companies provide weapons and covert surveillance supplies that maintain the occupation by force. Others take or exploit Palestinian resources, including scarce water and even the land itself. All are profiting from Israel's violations of international law and international human rights standards.

Some examples:

CATERPILLAR profits from the destruction of Palestinian homes and the uprooting of Palestinian orchards by supplying the armor-plated and weaponized bulldozers that are used for such demolition work.

VEOLIA profits from the construction and expansion of illegal Jewish-only settlements by operating a landfill in the West Bank, exploiting Palestinian natural resources to serve the settlements, and by contracting for the future operation of an illegal light rail system connecting these settlements with Jerusalem.

NORTHROP GRUMMAN profits from the production of parts for the Apache helicopters and F-16 aircrafts used by Israel against civilians in Gaza during Israel's 2008-09 assault.

ELBIT profits from the confiscation of Palestinian land by providing surveillance equipment that is mounted on the Separation Wall, which was declared unlawful by the International Court of Justice.

MOTOROLA profits from Israel's control of the Palestinian population by providing surveillance systems around Israeli settlements, checkpoints, and military camps in the West Bank, as well as communication systems to the Israeli army and West Bank settlers.

While the specific companies held change over time, TIAA-CREF's investment criteria do not screen out such investments, which are incompatible with our values and with corporate social responsibility.

Out of commitment to equality, freedom and international law, we therefore urgently request that:

TIAA-CREF divest from companies that:

Directly profit from or contribute to the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Provide products or services that contribute to the construction and maintenance of Israeli settlements and/or the Separation Wall, both of which are illegal under international law.

Provide products or services that contribute to or enable violent acts that target civilians.

TIAA-CREF establish investment criteria to exclude any such companies in the future.

For almost 100 years, TIAA-CREF has striven to provide financial services for the greater good, helping those of us in the academic, medical, cultural, and research fields to plan for and live in retirement. Please help us invest the fruit of our labor and enjoy our retirement in good conscience.

While TIAA-CREF acknowledges participants' varying views on Israeli and Palestinian policies and the Gaza Strip and West Bank, we are unable to alter our investment policy in accordance with those views. Our responsibility to earn a competitive financial return on the retirement savings entrusted to us by 3.7 million participants obliges us to invest in a diverse line-up of companies across all sectors of the global economy.

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Questions & Answers

Why not divest from such companies as Caterpillar, Northrop Grumman, and Motorola?

Our responsibility to earn a competitive financial return on the retirement savings entrusted to us obliges us to invest in a diverse line-up of companies across all sectors of the global economy. The holdings at issue comply fully with U.S. law.

Last year you divested from companies with ties to Sudan. How similar is the situation in the Gaza Strip and West Bank?

Our decision to sell shares in certain companies with ties to Sudan culminated a three-year effort to encourage them to take affirmative steps to ease human rights abuses and end genocide in the region in which they operate.

Our divestment action was consistent with U.S. foreign policy, as enshrined in the Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act of 2007, which made it easier for mutual funds and private pension fund managers to sell their investments in companies with ties to the Sudanese government.

We believe that concerns about the situation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are best addressed by U.S. foreign policy and lend themselves less to using one's shareholder status to influence portfolio companies.